


Death of the Asset

by sheerrloockk



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes - Freeform, Canon-Typical Violence, Civil War, M/M, The Asset - Freeform, civil war spoilers, winter soldier - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-09
Updated: 2016-05-09
Packaged: 2018-06-07 07:35:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6795025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheerrloockk/pseuds/sheerrloockk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There were only ever two options - solitude or the big cold sleep. He’d figured that out when he’d walked away from the glass plaque at the museum with his face on it. He knew, just as well, that one was temporary and the other was permanent.</p><p>CIVIL WAR SPOILERS.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Death of the Asset

There were only ever two options - solitude or the big cold sleep. He’d figured that out when he’d walked away from the glass plaque at the museum with his face on it. He knew, just as well, that one was temporary and the other was permanent, so when he’d walked out into the American sunshine, his stash from HYDRA safe houses securely on his back, he’d known he was on borrowed time.

He bought a flight to Europe. He went to London first, but there were too many people. Too many people who might recognize him. Too many people in his personal space. He was twitchy as all get-out, as his mother would’ve said. 

He took a bus and boat and another bus into France, then walked east. As he walked, his memories returned. Some in patchy blurs, others in waves of clarity. The ones with Steve Rogers, Captain America were always vivid - they usually returned to him in dreams, but he knew they were all real. He remembered a shamble of an apartment, riding the streetcar in Brooklyn, working on the docks, taking girls on double dates with Steve, Steve sick in bed all winter… 

He can always remember Steve’s voice. He knew exactly what it sounds like. His mind recreates it perfectly, somehow, and when he hears Steve’s voice, even in his dreams, there’s a connection to something within him. His heart? His head? His soul? He’s not really sure if he has any of those to speak of anymore. Surely the humanity has been burned out of him after so long a machine of death and destruction and torture. 

Because the other memories return as well - blood on his hands, and that’s frequently more literal than he likes. He remembers killing so many people. There’s always a strange haze over these memories, as if he’s watching them through dirty sunglasses, but still… Unmistakably, him. His hands. His shots. His slices. 

While he walks, he shudders and weeps for the people he’s killed, the lives he’s destroyed. He writes in a journal that he bought at the airport, memories as they come. Sometimes he draws pictures. Sometimes he cuts them out of newspapers, when he’s in a town and has access. Steve Rogers Captain America is on the front page of the newspaper a lot, along with his friends and cohorts - the redheaded woman who’s familiar in a way he doesn’t like, the black man with wings, and more. He sees the name  _ Tony Stark _ above the picture of a robot-suit, split with a picture of a man in a tuxedo. They seem to be the same man, and the name jolts him in horror. 

He remembers a face, twice over, one much older than the other, but a voice that sounds similar, saying that name, the name from the museum - “Sergeant Barnes!” He stops walking, in the middle of nowhere, near the border of France and Germany, and cries. 

He remembers Howard Stark. He remembers how much help he’d been in the war, how initially they’d disliked each other, but managed to find mutual respect in their equal support of Steve Rogers. He remembers shooting out his tires, positioning his corpse so it looked like he’d died on impact, choking his wife to death. 

He throws up the protein bar he’d eaten a few hours ago. 

//

Bucky walks to Romania, and Bucharest is good enough. Small enough, quiet enough, cheap enough that he knows he can stay here for a long time. He raids another HYDRA safe house and he has money again.

It’s taken him a few months to walk here, but he knows that if he’s interested in hiding, going slow is more strategic than darting around. He stays in one place, reads the newspapers, writes in his journals, tries to stay calm. 

Time passes, somehow. It marches firmly onward, and Bucky must go with it. He shops at farmer’s markets. When he’s almost out of money, he walks away, goes to another city with another safe house to raid, and then walks back to Bucharest. It feels good here - no memories of this place, safely shut away from the two sides of the continent that he  _ does _ remember. Maybe he just hasn’t unearthed any horrifying memories of Romania yet, but until he does, he’ll stay here, alone, quiet.

He knows Romanian, which he finds surprising and a bit disconcerting. He speaks easily and can understand every word he’s told, and he lies awake the first few nights, waiting for the memories of his sins to come into his mind’s eye, but they don’t. He just knows Romanian. He sleeps.

//

After a while, they come, just as he knew they would. He sees Steve Rogers Captain America in his rooms, looking at his journal, and he freezes. He doesn’t want Steve to know what he’s done, not in detail like that, but he just opens to a page about himself.

_ That arrogant little punk _ , he thinks to himself unexpectedly, and he almost smiles, but Steve realizes he’s not alone. He turns. They speak. All hell breaks loose.

Bucky runs, because there were only ever two options.

//

He fights alongside Steve again. He remembers events, but not quite emotions. He remembers the many looks on Steve’s face when Bucky had saved him from being beat up, when Bucky had given him gifts for his birthday ( _ July 4, of course _ ), when Bucky had hugged him goodbye before shipping out that first time, when they’d successfully complete a mission and bring home hundreds of captured soldiers. But he can’t remember how he felt, receiving those looks. He can’t remember how  _ Bucky Barnes _ felt, when Steve Rogers gave him those looks. He’s not sure if he can remember how to feel at all - or at least, feel anything other than guilt. 

He remembers Steve reaching out to him as he feels the metal railing give way beneath two flesh hands. He remembers hearing Steve shout his name, even above his own terrified screaming. He remembers Steve’s voice and opening his eyes, and seeing the huge man he’d become when Bucky wasn’t there to look out for him.  _ God, I never would’ve let him sign himself up for that, _ he thinks.

He remembers Steve’s voice, cutting through all of the murk and fog in his mind, and he remembers speaking English for the first time in years to say, “Who the hell is Bucky?” 

There’s a power in Steve’s voice, Bucky knows. He’s not sure why, or how, but Steve’s voice grounds him in reality, no matter what. There’s something in his body, in his cells, that knows Steve, that trusts him, even if Bucky’s mind and heart can’t trust anything at all. He goes with it. He fights. He protects Steve and Steve protects him. 

//

It all comes to a head, as these things often do. They’re in Siberia, and Bucky remembers, hates that he remembers, hates that it feels almost comforting in its familiarity, hates himself for who they turned him into. Hates all the more that he can’t throw it off, that he can’t just turn it off and become Bucky Barnes again, because Steve loves Bucky Barnes.

There’s nothing more obvious in the world than how much Steve Rogers Captain America  _ loves _ Bucky Barnes. For some reason, he thinks that that man is still somewhere in the depths of the Asset’s brain and body. He believes that the Asset can find Bucky Barnes and bring him forward again. He will fight to the ends of the earth (as evidenced by their location) to give the Asset the chance to find his inner Bucky Barnes.

The Asset knows it’s impossible. He remembers when Bucky Barnes kissed Steve Rogers, back in 1941, before the United States joined the war. He remembers that Steve Rogers kissed Bucky Barnes back. He remembers those looks, in their small tent, those words and touches, and he remembers the words Bucky Barnes said back to Steve Rogers, but he can’t remember feeling a damn thing. Not about Steve’s words, not about the ones coming out of his own mouth.

They’re in an elevator and the Asset, Bucky, whoever he is, god he wishes he was just Bucky,  _ he _ can feel the tension. He sees Steve looking at him, feels the questions Steve wants to ask but won’t, because first off, now isn’t the time, and second, Bucky’s a mentally broken horror show right now so there’s no need to jump straight into sex and kissing.

He remembers kissing Steve, so much, all over. He remembers both of Steve’s bodies - the small, skinny, sickly one, that he’d kissed all over with reverence and delicacy and then this one, the huge, muscled one, that lent itself to much more vigorous incidents in their tent. He remembers gasping and reaching for Steve and kissing him all the more, he remembers saying  _ I love you _ on repeat. He just doesn’t remember love.

He wonders if Steve knows this. He wonders if Steve can tell.

//

He’s not really sure how Steve knows that Bucky killed Howard Stark. Maybe he just put two and two together. He honestly wants to let Stark pummel him to death, because he deserves it, he really fucking deserves it, but Steve won’t let that happen. Steve would fight Tony Stark to the death if Bucky died, and Bucky won’t allow that. He won’t allow  _ any more deaths _ that are  _ his fault _ . Not Stark. Not Steve. Not anybody, ever again. 

This is why there are only two options. Because if anybody else dies, just so Bucky, the Asset, the fucking Winter Soldier homicidal maniac brainwashed killing machine, can live? No. Just no. There’s no end to that  _ if _ . There’s only no. Bucky won’t kill anybody else. Bucky won’t let anybody else die for him.

He sees Steve rear back with the shield that Howard Stark made for him and plunge it down into Stark’s robot suit, and for an instant, he’s sure that Tony Stark is dead, too. His heart stops. He’s on the ground, dripping blood (his own, for once), sparking on the left side, and he’s sure Tony Stark is dead. Steve rips the shield out of Stark’s suit and Bucky realizes that Stark is alive. 

He gasps in horrified relief. He’d almost failed… He’s almost failed again, so soon after his last failure. But not this time. For now, everyone gets to live, just a little while longer.

Steve drops the shield, and Bucky knows the symbol of the action. He knows what Steve is giving up, for him, for  _ nothing _ . But he remembers that scrawny boy who got in more alley fights than a cat. He doesn’t argue. He lets Steve lift him, lets himself swing an arm around Steve’s neck, lets himself be hauled away.

//

The arm is gone and Bucky feels almost helpless without it. He knows he’s still strong, still powerful, still  _ dangerous _ , but he feels as though he’s been exonerated. Well, he hasn’t, not by a long shot, but when he looks in the mirror in a lab in Wakanda, and sees just the tiniest glimpse of metal on his shoulder - that glaring red star is gone - he breathes a sigh of relief.

The Asset isn’t gone, but the heavy reminder that Bucky carried with him is gone. He can wear a t-shirt without cringing. It’s plain white - a color Bucky honestly can’t remember ever wearing, which is kind of nice. Nothing attached to this color. In the 40s, in that stuffy apartment, a white shirt would’ve gotten dirty too quickly to be worth having, and the Asset wore black or variants of camouflage. He likes white, he decides. 

It’s the first  _ opinion _ he’s settled on since he joined the damn army in 1942. He almost cries with the knowledge. He doesn’t tell Steve right away. He doesn’t want to give away this new person he might become too easily. But after a while, he does, and telling Steve he likes white feels  _ good _ . He smiles, and Steve smiles at Bucky’s smile, and Bucky knows what he has to do, because there were only ever two options.

“I have to go back under,” he says, after only a week in Wakanda. They’ve been healing - quickly, of course. Some scientists and engineers have been fiddling with Bucky’s arm for the last few days, and tomorrow they’ll rebuild pieces of it to close off the robot stump. That was another choice Bucky made - not to get another arm just yet.

“You don’t,” Steve says immediately, raring for a fight, as always. Bucky smiles.

“I do,” he says. “Until you, or T’Challa can find a way to fix the programming in my head, I’m too dangerous. I’m too much of a risk right now. I can’t kill anybody else.”

It’s that last one that convinces Steve - Bucky sees it in his eyes. He’s going to fight a little longer, because that’s what Steve always does (Bucky remembers this), but he’ll give in in less than a day. 

That’s exactly what happens.

The next day, Bucky’s metal shoulder is re-plated, re-sottered, and totally useless. He loves it. He hasn’t felt this happy since….

Felt. This. Happy.

Fuck, and that’s when he knows he’s made the right choice,  _ really _ .

He  _ feels _ . He feels  _ happy _ . He looks at Steve and he  _ feels _ . He feels  _ relief _ , because Steve won’t have to worry about him anymore. He won’t wonder where Bucky is or how he’s doing, because he’ll know. And the next time Bucky wakes up after this last big cold sleep, he’ll know that Steve can fix what’s wrong with him. Or, at least part of what’s wrong with him.

But one part of the many will fix itself, because  _ he _ , whoever he is these days, can still feel things. He remembers feeling. He remembers what it all felt like. Not just the touch, the sensations on his skin, but the way his heart throbbed and his throat closed up and words spilled off his tongue on earnest.

He remembers loving Steve Rogers. He hopes he still loves Steve Rogers, because there’s no one who’s ever deserved to be loved the way Steve Rogers does. He’s that knight in shining armor that every dame’s ever dreamed of; he’s the hero, the savior, the best of men. And he remembers how much Bucky loved him, had always loved him, since they were kids. He remembers Bucky thinking that he would always love Steve Rogers, no matter what happened to them.

_ Yes _ , he thinks. Bucky Barnes always will love Steve Rogers, and, at least a little, isn’t he Bucky Barnes?

//

His wardrobe is full of white clothes. He thinks Steve had something to do with it, and he appreciates the effort. Steve’s looking at him with a sadness he’s trying to hold back, and poor Steve is failing miserably. He’s an open book - he’s always been an open book (except when they played poker, the dick), and Bucky wishes there were more he could do, but he can’t. He knows this is right. Steve does too, otherwise he probably wouldn’t have let Bucky do it.

“I’ll miss you, Buck,” says Steve quietly. His lip trembles, and Bucky wishes he could be the man he was, wishes he could kiss it away, but he can’t. 

“I’ll miss you too,” he says. “It’s the right thing to do.”

Steve says nothing, but his silence agrees with Bucky, begrudgingly. 

They’re about to leave Bucky’s room and go to the lab for Bucky’s cryofreeze, but Steve stops him before he gets to the door.

“Buck,” he says. “You know, right?” His blue eyes, icy like the ocean, pierce Bucky’s heart. He’s almost asking if Bucky remembers, but no, it’s not quite what Steve means. Not  _ remember _ .  _ Know.  _ Knowing is different than remembering, and Bucky has always  _ known _ , even if he didn’t remember.

“Yeah,” he says quietly. “I know. You know, too?”

Steve takes a deep breath.

“Yeah, ‘course, Buck,” he lies, and there’s a strange expression on his face - something between relief and agony. Steve had only ever looked like that at his mother’s funeral. Bucky hates himself for this, what he’s putting Steve through, but he  _ has to do this _ . 

Steve reaches out and pulls Bucky into a hug. It’s small, it’s quick, and Bucky pretends not to notice the press of lips against his collarbone just before Steve pulls back. He wants to kiss Steve here, now, forever, more than anyway, and it’s a rush to  _ want _ like this. He feels himself shake, feels Steve grab him, one hand against his bicep, the other against his side, trying to steady him.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky says, not for the first time, probably not the last.

“Don’t be sorry for what they did to you, for what they took from you,” says Steve. He’s always so insistent. 

“I am, though,” says Bucky. “I’m so… so sorry.”

“I know,” says Steve. He pulls Bucky back in as Bucky begins to weep, not for the first time, probably not the last. He lays one hand on Bucky’s back now, the other combs through Bucky’s hair. “I know. It isn’t your fault. You didn’t have a choice. They took your choices from you. But you choose now.” Steve’s voice hardens into resolve as he comforts Bucky. 

They stay like that, embracing, quiet, for a while, and Bucky is comforted for the first time in… god, over seventy years. He looks up at Steve. He pulls away. He turns to go through the door, but he stops. He turns around and looks at Steve again. He takes a step forward, leans in, and kisses Steve. It’s nothing much - lips closed, just a press, but he has to do this, just once. 

Steve’s frozen in shock, but after a second, he pulls Bucky to him in a clumsy motion that reminds Bucky of those awkward nights in Brooklyn, trying to be quiet so the neighbors didn’t hear. Steve’s kissing him back, with soft lips and gentle hands on him. Gentler than they’ve ever been. Gentle in a way that reminds Bucky of the way he was gentle with that tiny, scrawny version of Steve, and Bucky remembers how much he loved that version of Steve. Somehow, Steve still loves this version of Bucky.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky says again, pulling away.

Steve stops kissing him, but keeps holding him, and that’s all Bucky wants. He just wants Steve to hold him.

“Don’t be sorry,” says Steve.

It doesn’t really matter for what anymore.

“I love you,” says Bucky, trying to prove it to someone - maybe both of them.

“I know,” says Steve, sliding a thumb across his cheek. “I know.” He doesn’t need to say he loves Bucky too. Bucky knows. The Asset knows. Every single fractured part of this man’s psyche knows this: Steve Rogers loves him, and he always will, no matter what happens to them.

Bucky goes into the pod for cryofreeze. The glass slides over him and he takes a deep breath. He looks over at Steve - the last thing he’s going to see, and hopefully the first on the other side of this big cold sleep. He shuts his eyes. He doesn’t see any of those other memories, of those other men he used to be. He sees the memory of today, of moments ago, in Steve’s arms, where he belongs. He’ll belong there again someday, when belonging isn’t such a risk.

He feels the cold creep, and he sleeps.  



End file.
